1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of detecting a fittingly locked state of a connector, intended to confirm whether or not a pair of female and male connector housings are in a proper locked state when fitting the two connector housings together for connection and locking them in a fitted posture, and also relates to a connector employing the method.
2. Statement of the Prior Art
Generally, a fitted-posture locking mechanism is provided on a pair of female and male connector housings that are fitted together for connection for locking the two conductor housings together in such a proper fitted posture. However, it often happens that the two connector housings are brought into use while they are in a semi-fitted state in which the connector housings are not fully fitted together, or in a state in which a locking operation is not being properly performed, thereby causing electrical failures while in use. This is due to the fact that a certain magnitude of insertion force is required to fit the connector housings together and that the locking mechanism is subject to deformation and/or breakage.
With a view to solving the above problem, the official gazette of Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 16080/1989 discloses a connector provided with an electrical detecting mechanism for detecting the above-mentioned semi-fitted state, or state in which a locking operation is not being properly performed, in a simple fashion. Namely, in this connector, a "metal contact plate extending from a substrate in a cantilever-like fashion and having bifurcated contact portions at a free end thereof" is provided on one of the connector housings, and one of the contact portions at the free end is press held by the leading end of a lock arm of the other connector housing that is properly fitted in one of the connector housings onto an electricity detecting conducting terminal provided therebelow, while the other contact portion at the free end is always kept in contact with another electricity detecting conducting terminal, thereby making it possible to detect a proper operation of the lock arm through the relative electricity conduction between these two electricity conducting terminals.
In this prior art detecting mechanism, since one of the bifurcated contact portions at the free end that protrudes from the common proximal portion is elastically deformed by the lock arm so as to be forcibly brought into contact with the electricity conducting terminal, while the other contact portion at the free end is biased to be kept in contact with the other electricity conducting terminal, the metal contact plate is displaced in a direction in which it inclines every time the connector housings are fitted together, with one of the contact portions at the free end being press-held and the other contact portion being floated. Moreover, the leading end of the metal contact plate that is subject to external force is easy to be deformed. This often causes contact errors between the contact portions at the free end and the electricity conducting terminals, and thus this prior art detecting mechanism has a drawback in that it lacks durability and reliability in its detecting performance.